King Princess • November 14, 2025 • The Depot
Reviewed and Photographed by Austin Dayton
Utah can sometimes feel like a strange stop on a national tour, especially from an outside perspective. It could be easy to assume Utah is just a quiet religious community that keeps things relatively tame, and that concert audiences would mirror that. But, as the real artists know, Salt Lake City is the complete opposite. Just under three years ago, an up-and-coming artist built a fan base from a small show in the city. So this last Friday, when King Princess rolled into The Depot, she knew what she was getting herself into. She was coming back to “some of the wildest fans” she had ever been around.
To cut right to the chase, King Princess (the stage name of Mikaela Straus) has built her empire around who she is, a lesbian woman. This tour, “Girl Violence,” highlighted that core perfectly. With her, Spill Tab Joined as support, and together they built an incredible night of amazing vocals, performance, and authenticity.
The Depot isn’t a huge venue, but that’s its magic; from almost every vantage point around the venue, it feels like you are an essential part of the band. The moment Spill Tab walked onto the stage, the audience quickly stepped into their role. Though not everyone was familiar with their discography, the venue became a party, cheers and screams, screams that could easily be mistaken for a modern-day mating call.
Those screams multiplied tenfold when the intro to “Cherry” began to play. The band sauntered onto the stage, building an aural tension as all waited for the King to arrive. After what seemed like months, the princess arrived, radiating sexual tension as she twisted around the stage, pulling her hands across every part of her body. Screams erupted from fans who seemed to be into more than just her music. At that point on it became clear that King Princess was building a space with her music for everyone to be exactly who they were; no facades were seen from that point on.
King Princess
With a sultry voice as smooth as butter, King Princess proceeded to sing song after song that seemed to equal parts captivate and excite. Songs like “Jamie” and “I Feel Pretty” immediately gave the audience what they wanted. So often in concerts, an artist has to structure a show with a mix of fan favorites and combine them with less popular music from the new album. This wasn’t the case with King Princess, as almost every single song, even those from her new album, felt like cult classics.
An early climax in the show came with the playing of “Pu**y is God.” Straus teased this song with a demand to the audience; she wanted some love directed to her drummer, Antoine Fadavi. As Antione got cheers, he would hit one of his drums, and the word pu**y immediately reverberated around the room. Cheers and screams only got louder with each drum hit. The echo of “pu**y” leading right into the song.
Another standout moment of the night also came early with “Talia,” which somehow still captivated the audience perfectly, despite it being one of her earliest hits. Tried and true, it held up to the scrutiny of time.
Her band deserved just as much credit as her. They weren’t flashy, but they were incredibly tight, leaning into heavier, dirtier tones that gave older songs new life. At one point, much to the excitement of many in the audience, it was made known that some of the band members were single, which immediately led to cheers and screams.
Other highlights of the night included the giant dice, which, as its name alludes to, is a giant dice with different options of fan favorite songs that didn’t often get played. Lucky for the crowd and the band, the dice landed on “band shots.” This meant the band got to take shots of alcohol while the audience got to choose the song the band played. To the excitement of everyone, “Profit” was chosen. A win-win.
The mood took a mellow yet well-received shift as she bounced into “Talia” with a playful and joy-drunk stagger. By the time she hit the chorus, half the people around me were dancing in that loose way that only happens when nobody cares how they look. As “Talia” came to an end, someone from the audience screamed something inaudible, but before anyone could figure out what was going on, King Princess was beckoning the woman to the front of the stage, where she proceeded to sign the woman’s breasts. It was little moments of free expression like this that dotted the entire night, eventually creating a theme of perfect authenticity and acceptance.
The night wrapped with an encore that could not be more perfect. “1950” turned into a full-venue sing-along, the type of sing-along where the audience gets louder than the artist and she just leans back, grinning, letting the crowd take over. The Depot’s acoustics amplified the voices into something messy but just as beautiful. The show concluded with “let us die,” a perfect bookend to the perfect night.
King Princess’s performance in Salt Lake this weekend was not only near perfect vocally, but also entered a level of community that is not often seen at a concert. Her songs, like many, were laced with love, hope, pain, and heartbreak, universal experiences for anyone, but what makes King Princess special is how she relates to the LGBTQIA+ fan. Everyone in attendance that night not only got to experience a great concert but also left feeling seen and heard. If you have the chance to see her in concert, do it.